It's not really that dumb a question in a lot of cases. A lot of people, myself included, do not really, fully control their own lives. We do things to fulfill other people's expectations, hoping that they will meet our expectations, and we also let our own fears dictate our actions.
Put yourself in the position of a mother of a family. The family expects you to do the laundry. On this day, you really don't want to, so you consider asking someone else to do it. But, no, you think, they're expecting you to do it, and they might be mad if you don't, and might not fulfill whatever expectation of yours you want them to. And then, if they do the laundry, they could realise they don't really need you, and that's threatening!
Look at the clothes you are wearing; do you like them? Or do you think other people will like them? If someone asks you a favour and you don't want to, do you do it anyway, maybe making a rationalisation that it won't be a big problem for you, and the person will think of you better?
Personally, I don't want to spend my life doing things according to what other people think I should do. It's very hard to do everything that we want to do after spending most of our lives living the way we think everyone else would prefer. This is partly for the reasons I've just mentioned, and also because after all of that fulfilling of expectations (that's turning into quite a platitude) we've come to not even know what we want and what we think will please others.
When a situation presents itself, what we want to do is probably the very first thing that comes to mind. It might be dismissed and replaced by a way to please others so quickly by our trained-to-please mindset that we don't even realise we wanted the first thing, and think what we really want is what will fulfill someone else's expectations. (gotta get me a thesaurus8^)
It takes a lot of practice, and a lot of mistakes made, to be able to even know what we want. Being consciously aware of our how-can-I-please-you? mindset and catching what first comes to mind, and what feels right, is as good a way as I know to practice this.
Then, when we know what it is that we really want, it takes a lot of courage to act on it; it often goes against everything we've been doing and could upset a lot of people. We may have to take it slowly, starting with doing what we want in smaller ways, and then working up. I know that's what I'm working on right now. (Not to say that I always now what it is that I want; I often get confused about what I really want.)
When we are aware of other people's expectations and we don't want to follow them, the easiest way to do that to rebel and do the exact opposite. This isn't any better than conforming to other people's standards. It still traps us, only here it's in doing the reverse.
It is very hard to do what we want, but I really don't want to spend my time in this world trapped in someone else's expectations so I'm going to keep trying hard to be aware of what I want and to do it.
Many of these thoughts were inspired and even originally thought (or at least presented to me as thought) by Shatki Gawain, author of Living In The Light. (Just so I'm not kidding myself or anyone else into thinking I've come up with all of this on my own.)
